Is your PAN card active?

A recent report mentioned that over 11.44 lakh PAN cards have been deactivated over the time for multiple reasons. These may include reasons of multiple issuing of PAN card to the same person, or the ones issued to non-existing person. System of generating PAN cards might have become a bit robust over the time, but I guess, few years back, it wasn't. Just like in recent times, there have been stories about issuing Aadhar cards, where it could be issued to even monkeys or trees, probably issuing PAN card had no control.
But, seems things are a bit different now. Infact, every person who is involved in some kind of monetary transactions has to have a PAN Card. Even my 80 years old father has one, although, he himself spends only Rs.5 every day to buy flowers for Puja, from the stall close to our home. Now, that attempts are being taken to crosscheck the validity of these cards, every one need to be aware of the way to check, whether their card is still valid or the government has deactivated it. Ofcourse, there is higher probability of it being valid and active, but there is no harm in confirming it. And that too when it easy.
All we have to do is to visit this page of income tax department:
http://www.incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/

Once on the page, your have to click on the option of "Know you PAN" .
A window will window asking for some of your details. I believe there is no harm in providing these informations here, on an official government website. In here, there is one query about status. This could be little confusing, as it tries to distinguish you as an individual or Hindu un-divided family, a trust, firm, company. But in general case, one should choose option "individual" to check your own personal PAN card status. You have to provide a mobile number. Once you enter these details, an OTP will be generated and sent to your mobile number. Enter this OTP and it will provide you with details of your PAN card as well as its present status.
The process is pretty simple. It just helps you to confirm details of PAN card, which has now become a core of all the monetary transactions.
A news appeared a couple of days back to inform people of this process, which I am pretty sure many of us must have missed. Even I checked it accidentally, a couple of days later. That's why this post.

A cloudy day at the Palace of Versailles, France

Palace of Versailles, which otherwise look so cheerful and colorful also has few gloomy days. One of those days captured here. A panoramic view of the garden on the right side of the palace.

Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Arvind Panagariya resigns: Shocking !! Why?

 I wonder, how many people know Arvind Panagariya ! I accept, even I did not really know, till couple of days back. In fact, while preparing for this post, when I tried searching for him on Google, I mistakenly entered name Ashok  Panagariya for searching a couple of times instead of Arvind, and landed up on a page of a neurologist!!
He was  the Vice-Chairman of Niti Aayog, another name, I doubt, most of the people around are not aware. Niti Aayog is a new thing in business, that has taken over the task of Planning Commission of India, back then headed by the famous Montek Singh Ahluwalia. Oh ! you must be knowing him well for at least two reasons, One for the famous Rs. 32 based Poverty line definition  and second for the renovation of toilet with just Rs. 35 Lakhs

Coming out of the shadow of such planning commission, and forming a new institution Niti Aayog, which has done pretty significant work with privitization  of a few sick government units and extending the same to Air India, bench marking reforms in medical and higher education and probably a few more tasks to talk about.
Although, Niti Aayog is still in its infancy, it seem to have done  some promising work in a short time. And all this could only because of this person, Arvind Panagariya at the helm of the Aayog. Looking at the way of his working and his sincerity, it is not that difficult to believe that he is an academician, working at Columbia University, who took this opportunity as a challange and successfully carried it for almost 3years. And now, as per news, because of the limitations of nature of his job, he needs to return to his old job, i.e. to academics. It seems intriguing to see that a person is ready to give up a prestigious position and wants to return to common position of an academician. But that is the fun, people don't realize. A person who loves to create new dishes in his kitchen, won't be happy, if asked to cater service to 1000 people. There may be lot of money in it, may it be a big challenge, but it still can not restrict him from returning to his old love, of creating something new, rather than applying already facts.
A few news items initially started coming out, where his resignation was shown as a sign of the rift between him and the government. But recently, he personally spoke about it and cleared air behind his resignation.

I guess, there may be issues between him and the government. But identifying his resignation as the response of those issues could be far fetched. I would rather believe his personal interview and rely on the words of an academician.

Artificial Intelligence: has uprising started too early?

Artificial Intelligence: two words which may sound, to a few as a solution to all kind of problems, and to few others, a reason for human extinction.

Yes, we apparently are arriving at the juncture, where this debate is going to take the whole world  in a whirlwind. What churns out of this, will probably decide the fate of the human kind.

For those, who are unware, watch this video uploaded on youtube by Coldfusion, explaining, what exactly is artificial intelligence?

There have been many movies by now making use of this concept of artificial intelligence, which begins with having it as a boon to human life, but almost all of them ending up proving it to be a curse. After watching  a movie "Rise of the planet of the apes", I wrote a post where I compared those intelligent monkeys to be another threat other than artificial intelligence, for the human race. 

Back then, movies were the only reason we felt AI's to be threat. But it seems, with time, the imaginations are turning into reality.  While many big-wigs including Elon Musk, Stefan Hawking, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak have already hinted about the threat of AI taking over humans, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, hasn't been thinking in the same  lines as those.There have incidences of heavy arguments between Mark and Elon over the issue. And just when Elon made a comment that, Mark has no understanding of AI, very soon, news have now emerged that the two bots running on AI had to be shut down, because they stopped using the English language fed to them, and instead developed their own code language to interact with each other. As a part of training, apart from training in conversation through english language, these bots were also developed with negotiation skills. After initial conversations going properly in English language, over the time, they started developing their own language. In this, apparently attempt was made (by the bots) to put emphasis on something, making it appear very important, and then as a part of negotiation, loose this "apparently" important thing, to gain things of their interest.

 A part of their conversation is given in the news reported here:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-artificial-intelligence-ai-chatbot-new-language-research-openai-google-a7869706.html

The language to us may look English, but it has been modified by the bots as per their requirement.

The severity of this experiment was to this extent, that Facebook apparently shut down the two bots to stop the conversation between them:

http://www.firstpost.com/india/facebook-researchers-shut-down-ai-bots-that-started-speaking-in-a-language-unintelligible-to-humans-3876197.html

I would call this a wake up call for all of us to understand where the world is going, and do we really need such things to emerge in near future. We can not run away from this. Few years, Facebook was used by only computer friendly people. But now, it is present in everyone's hand and making sure, you kill your time on it. Did you ask for it? No. But it still reached your doorsteps. Similarly, AI if emerged, will unknowingly enter your home. The concept of cloning, when emerged was proposed to have many prospects, but human cloning was back then barred, realizing possible threats, which come with it. AI too, would show, many prospective benefits, but there probably are more threats hidden behind those benefits. It may initially make us feel like master to begin, but unknowingly may end up make us its slave entirely and for eternity.

Canoeing and Rowing arrangement @ Marseille seashore

A very beautiful view of Marseille seashore with arrangement of rowing and canoeing made at the store.

An inspiring video of a Japanese kid

A couple of days back, I received a video in one of my whatsapp group. A note preceding the video mentions about a Japanese kid, who fails to crossover a barrier by jumping over it, a couple of times. After four such failed attempts, all his friends gather around him and do an act of cheering him up. What follows later is just mind blowing. The way this boy transforms in later few seconds and make a successful jump over the barrier is just awesome. This video really made me happy to an extent that I downloaded it and saved a copy, to view occasionally, when ever there is a need for me to motivate myself. Today, I decided to go one step ahead, and am sharing this video on my youtube channel for all of you to enjoy and turn positive by sparing just a couple of minutes out of your busy schedule.

The quality of video may not be very good, as it is downloaded from Whatsapp. If that is a case, I searched online and came across few other copies of the same video already uploaded elsewhere. You may then watch those copies here:


Credit goes to the person, who was present at this event physically,took this video and moreover decided to share it publically with all of us.

Hard Luck Indian Women's team.

I guess, it happened for the first time, that Indians were actually following ball to ball, a women's cricket match. The occasion was the final world cup match between England and India. India was the probable winner. The match went down the wire and one thing that happens pretty much always with us, happened here too. Indian batswomen lost it under pressure.

This was a big occasion. Also an important event, as it probably is the last chance of watching two great players of the game. Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami. I have been following women's cricket partly and these two names have stuck in my mind for a very long time. I remember watching Jhulan's bowling many years ago and felt like she is the Kapil Dev of the Women's cricket.

It was unfortunate to loose the finals. Our players couldn't hold up against the pressure, although there was no real reason to panic. We were cruising fine, until Punam got out LBW. It was a genuine wicket. But what followed after that was unnecessary. There was no need for Veda to try hitting lofted shot. Similar nature of hasty decisions taken by other players. They were hitting into fielder's hand and trying to get a run. I felt like the captain failed to reach upto players and give them direction on how to approach the game. She kind of left it on them to attempt to win the game. This reminded me of a world cup game way back sometime between Westindies and Australia. Westindies were cruising to win and just required some 30 odd runs with as good as 7 wickets in hands and many many overs to bowl. But then just dramatically, Australia managed to get all the wickets and reached the final.

Anyway, it hurt to loose the game and the world cup. But it brought many positives out. Now every one know that India women's team exist and they are too good to forget or ignore. Women's cricket match got viewers to an extent that Lords was full yesterday. I was happy to see the presence of Akshay Kumar in the stadium. Atleast few celebrities follow what they say.

All in all, a good show. Now BCCI should take efforts and make sure that the Indians keep getting some or the other updates of Indian team performance around the year regularly. That will help to get people hitched to Women's cricket automatically.

I wish Indian's Women cricket team and hope they perform even better to beat India's Men's team someday.